No One Mourns the Wicked
by Someone aka Me
Summary: "There is no honor, says the world, in fighting for the Dark side." But someone has to mourn the wicked. Someone has to mourn for Severus Snape, for Bellatrix Lestrange, for Barty Crouch, and for Tom Riddle.


I own nothing.

Warning: two swear words.

Summary: "There is no honor, says the world, in fighting for the Dark side." But someone has to mourn the wicked.

"No one mourns the Wicked.  
No one cries "They won't return!"  
No one lays a lily on their grave."

~No One Mourns the Wicked, WIcked soundtrack.

~*NOMtW*~

He approaches the small gravestone in a little graveyard in Spinner's End. It's a simple thing, pure ebony and about 30 centimeters tall. Just a name, dates, and a sentence. _'A Hero in the End_.' But few believe the epitaph. Very few have ever of will ever hail Severus Snape as a hero. And it's true, he wasn't nice. He was, for lack of a better word, a bastard.

But he never tried to be nice. He never tried to be someone he wasn't. And, in the end, he gave his life to stop the madness. So the epitaph, chosen by a man who hated Severus Snape in life and only appreciated him in death, still rings true.

The man staring at the headstone bends down and places a white lily on the unkempt grave.

"Someone has to mourn the wicked," he murmurs softly.

~*NOMtW*~

Feet crunching on the fresh-fallen snow, he approaches the next site. He's not in Spinner's End anymore – he's not in a graveyard at all. There's no grave for the body of Bellatrix Lestrange. Her husband had her cremated before he was shipped off to Azkaban.

No one mourns the lack of grave for Bellatrix Lestrange. Anyone who would is locked up or dead. Everyone else saw her as she died – insane. But, before the madness consumed her (and who wouldn't go mad in that hell?), even Bellatrix was a person once. Even Bellatrix Lestrange, famed torturess, was a person, once.

People see who she became, and no one remembers who she was. Even the sister who loved her once is sick of people flinching away from her in the streets, just because of her resemblance to Bellatrix. Even Andromeda forgets, sometimes, that Bellatrix was once a teenage girl with hopes and dreams, who believed just a little bit too much in what a madman had to say.

The man standing in the middle of Hogwarts' Great Hall, as close as he can estimate to the place where Bellatrix died, kneels down and lays a white lily on the floor.

"Someone has to mourn the wicked."

~*NOMtW*~

His feet trace a path up to a particular office – it's, fortunately, uninhabited at the moment. Over the years, though, it's been home to various Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers.

It's the room where Bartemius Crouch lost all semblance of life.

The madness of Barty Crouch Jr cannot be blamed on Azkaban. He was there for a week, at most. No, Barty was not driven mad by Dementors. Barty was driven mad in the same insane quest for power that his father undertook, though they went about it in very different ways.

Barty Crouch Jr believed that power was obtained by dominance over people, and dominance was achieved by violence and pain. He believed wholeheartedly in his master's methods, and even more so after he was betrayed by his father. His mother, the only serenity in his life, he allowed to die in order to save him, but he was too far gone to feel any guilt.

His entire existence was driven by the desire to enable the Dark Lord to obtain power, thereby granting Barty power by association.

But he stepped too far, and too close to Dumbledore. He played with fire, masquerading right under Dumbledore's crooked nose, and it consumed him.

The man in the abandoned office places a white lily on the desk.

"Someone has to mourn the wicked."

~*NOMtW*~

He wanders back down to the Great Hall and, for the first time, glances at the eastern wall. It's at the foot of the eastern wall that Tom Riddle died, and, as a memorial, the eastern wall is now covered with the names of the fallen. Tom Riddle is not on that wall. Bellatrix Lestrange is not on that wall.

The memorial is for those who died fighting for the Light. There is no honor, says the world, in fighting for the Dark side.

Tom Riddle died Lord Voldemort – but, in the end, he was still just a mortal man. No matter how hard he tried to be infinite, he was as finite as anyone else. His quest for vengeance against the world he felt had wronged him was futile.

He was a monster, but he was still a man.

The man in the Great Hall lays a white lily at the foot of the wall.

"Someone," he says with a tone of finality, "has to mourn the wicked."


End file.
